Racial groups are used as vote banks by the two major parties - that's all there is to it. It has nothing to with wanting to help the poor or improve social cohesion, rather the opposite. A divided society is great for the most incompetent politicians since it provides them an easy way to whip up their constituents against other groups and fish for more votes.

So change FPTP to ranked choice and end the age of American extremism.

Unfortunately the two parties that hold the reigns of power only stand to lose from such a system... so it isn’t gonna happen.

As an American, I think it's because the treatments for racism are far cheaper and more tolerable than the treatments for poverty. Minorities were kept out of any opportunity to create generational wealth for a long time, due to racism. The problem we need to solve to reverse that is deprivation of generational wealth for decades, not racism from 60 years ago. We don't want to talk about that, though, because most of the solutions end up looking like wealth redistribution. There isn't a way to cheat poverty that I've seen. You either have enough money or you don't, and the only way out is to have enough money.

That's not to say that racism isn't a problem; it is, and we should fix it. It's not going to magically solve problems like graduation rates and income gaps, however.

You could start by closing tax loopholes or introducing a corporate community/education support tax. We leak a lot of wealth IMO that could be captured and distributed to those in need but we don’t because we live in a corrupt society that’s lost it’s backbone.

The supposition we’re exploring in this sub-thread is that AA is not actually a treatment for racism and more of a signal of virtue collectively by society. Real treatment would be to do the expensive and disruptive thing, yes.

You might not be aware of this, but taxation in the US is much more progressive than it is in Europe.